The Maryland Obamacare website has mistakenly referred callers to a Seattle pottery business since last fall, KOMO-WA reports. The "glitch" was first reported last week in the Baltimore Sun:
Hundreds of people who got stuck on Maryland's glitch-ridden health exchange have ended up on the phone with Sue Lunz. And her pottery supply business. In Seattle.
The state mistakenly listed her company's 1-800 number on the website, directing some people who couldn't pick a health insurance provider not to the state's call center, but to a West Coast business that manufactures specialty kilns.
Some days, Lunz said, she gets a handful of frustrated health insurance shoppers, but more often several dozen bombard her small company each day, desperate for assistance navigating an exchange whose technical problems have made it among the worst in the nation.
KOMO reported the store was receiving as many as 20 calls per day. The health care shoppers were predictably unhappy. "I feel so bad for them, because they are so frustrated with their website," said a store worker.
Maryland officials fixed the programming error only recently after the Sun ran the story. State health care administrators have called the Seattle business to apologize.
